Ara Baliozian: Ways and means

[ara baliozian]

POLITICS

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In politics, the most important question to be answered is not what is just or morally superior but what action has a better chance to succeed. To ignore this point is to make the erroneous assumption that we live in a world where the just is destined to prevail over the unjust. We Armenians more than anyone else ought to know by now that in life, in history and politics, the just and the compassionate may lose and the ruthless and the unjust may win. The wise know when to adapt and accept reality on its own terms as fools go on speculating endlessly in a labyrinth of abstractions, morality and metaphysics. Nothing comes more easily to man than to reserve moral superiority for himself; much more difficult to come to grips with reality and to decide what must be done.

 

After being persecuted for millennia, sometimes even after a single military defeat, a nation is bound to produce a lunatic fringe. Examples: the rise of the KKK in the South after the American Civil War, and the Nazis after the defeat of Germany in World War I. Our political parties represent the nation only in the very limited sense that a lunatic fringe represents the people. This may explain why so far we have failed again and again to develop a consensus. Consensus is reached only by rational beings willing to do what’s in the best interest of the nation. This to me is as clear as daylight, but try to explain it to our partisans who consider themselves the brains of the people.

[ara baliozian]

REFLECTIONS

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Understanding is not a purely intellectual act but a disposition of the heart and mind working in harmony.

 

In our environment honesty is rare, and worse: an honest man doesn’t have much of a chance to survive. I am personally acquainted with two honest fund-raisers both of whom resigned and, as far as I know, no one wanted to know why because (my guess is) everyone assumed it was because they had refused to cooperate with shady characters in charge of the enterprise.

 

Is it possible for a sensible or sensitive man to live in the middle of so much ignorance, greed, stupidity and evil and maintain his mental balance? One must be slightly unbalanced to be normal.

 

I don’t write for fools and fanatics but for reasons of their own they keep reading me.

 

Two reasons why I believe we may have friends among the Turks and enemies among our fellow Armenians: (1) some of the bloodiest confrontations in the history of mankind were civil wars, and (2) statistics show that the chances of being murdered by a member of the family are much higher than by a total stranger.

 

In the eyes of our chauvinists I am guilty of the most unforgivable crime: refusal to recycle chauvinist crap.

 

If you are honest, all you may succeed in doing is uniting all the charlatans, fanatics, and crooks against you.

[Guest Fadi]

Ara do you mind if I post some of your essays in another board ? Even if I desagree still on many of your points

 

If you ask yourself who I may be, well I'm the Imasdun of the diasporan forum.

 

Ah and will not post to criticise them, just some interesting ones worthy of being posted in a larger scale(Turkish world)

 

[ May 23, 2001: Message edited by: Domino ]

[ara baliozian]

MORE REFLECTIONS

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A charlatan will never say, "I deceive and mislead because I am a charlatan"; and a fanatic will never say, "I speak or think or feel as I do because I happen to be a member of the lunatic fringe." What they will say instead is: "I speak the honest truth because I am a man of honor. I love my people. Everything I say and do is motivated by selfless dedication to God and Country." And strange as it may seem, there will be those who will believe them.

 

Even if you are as wise as Socrates and as compassionate as Christ, you will provoke hatred. Did I say "even?" make it "especially!"

 

How to make an Armenian enemy for life? Catch him in a contradiction or lie. Be objective. Do not recycle chauvinist or partisan crap. Be honest. Question his evidence or source of information. Doubt his integrity.

 

So what if we are survivors? That means nothing to me. So what if a thousand years from now there will be Armenians on the planet? That means nothing to me either, in the same way that the survival of Kurds and Gypsies means nothing to the world.

 

There is an idiot in all of us, including the most wise. Likewise, there is a killer in all of us, compliments of our reptilian ancestors. This may explain why sometimes intelligent men are deceived by fools, and decent men are misled by criminal psychopaths; and here, I could make a long list of illustrious names who supported Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin.

 

When the eminent French poet Paul Valéry was once asked by a friend, " Why do you allow critics to upset you? Most of them are fools who don’t even make an effort to understand what you are saying." He replied: "When a mad dog bites, it hurts."

[Guest Fadi]

Can I take this as an yes ?

[ara baliozian]

DIVISIONS

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The question that comes up again and again is: "The whole world is divided – there are divisions everywhere: why should we be different?" This question is raised as if it has never been answered. But it has, many times. So here we go again.

Division is a single word with many shades, meanings and definitions – from static to dynamic.

There are divisions with a specific purpose, destination or aim, and there are divisions that are meaningless, aimless and ultimately self defeating.

There are division in which one side represents the thesis and the other the antithesis that eventually result in synthesis, and there are divisions that represent nothing but bloated egos.

There are functional divisions and dysfunctional divisions.

In biology, cells divide to promote growth and they also divide (as in cancer) to promote death.

There are divisions in which both sides engage in dialogue and there are divisions that are monologues that never cross.

There are divisions that reflect the self-interest of specific groups (poor/rich) and there are divisions that reflect fossilized misconceptions that represent nothing but the powers and privileges of non-representative clans.

There are political divisions (conservatives/liberals) and there are tribal divisions.

There are American or French divisions and there are Kurdish or Gypsy divisions.

And now you may guess to which variety our own divisions belong.

[MJ]

ara baliozian

Member

Member # 271

posted June 09, 2001 07:48AM

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ON REASON

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Reason is [must be] open to reason.

In real life, however, reason is almost always contaminated by prejudice, faith, mystical insight or some other irrational component (such as fear or hope) of whose existence we may be totally unaware.

When two reasonable men disagree, it may be because either one or both are allowing the irrational component within them to guide their reason. But that amounts to saying that these two men are no longer men of reason.

ON CULTURES

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Anthropologists divide societies and cultures into two groups: hot and cold; the hot ones (those of the West) are analytical, rational, progressive; the cold ones are primitive tribes, static, ritualistic, superstitious.

By rejecting intellectuals, we reject analysis, and by accepting the authority of the boss and the bishop (or political or religious leadership) we subscribe to superstition and propaganda.

It is a fact that intellectuals have played a marginal role in our history; their ideas (unlike the ideas of Rousseau and Voltaire who prepared the grounds for the French Revolution) never penetrated the consciousness of the masses; and the reason for that is that the masses in the Ottoman Empire were enslaved by the tyranny of the sultan and his representatives (our patriarchs and amiras).

The situation is the same today: our intellectual class has been systematically exterminated by our bosses and bishops and the Armenian people continue to be at the mercy of God and capital (make it, Capital and god), superstition and propaganda.

 

ON LOVE

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The message of love has been with us for 2000 years!

It isn’t fail-safe; you cannot teach love to Talaat, Hitler, Stalin and their successors.

A favorite French philosopher of mine (Merleau-Ponty) once said that the challenge we confront today is unmasking deceivers.

I don’t see any contradiction in these two attitudes (loving and unmasking); let each go about his business and if they succeed in loving or unmasking, mankind is bound to be the ultimate beneficiary!

 

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ara baliozian

[ara baliozian]

JINGOISM (iv)

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"Hye lineluts araj, petk a mard linel!"

Garegin Ter-Haroutunyan (Njdeh)

 

After reading a reference to Armenian prostitutes in a recent essay,, one of my gentle readers (of whom, as you probably know, we have a great many) suggested that my own mother may well have been a prostitute. The sad truth is, my mother, like most mothers (and probably your own too), was brainwashed to look down at prostitutes but as far I know she did nothing to expose or combat the corrupt power structure that drives some women to prostitution.

Dear gentle reader: I am sure you are a far better person than my mother and your mother, and you have done everything in your power to give an end to this social evil.

And speaking of mothers: I am sure your father too, who is no doubt a gentleman, never knowingly walked past a house of prostitution and he too did his utmost to abolish this social cancer.

[ara baliozian]

ON PROSTITUTION AND PATRIOTISM

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ON PROSTITUTION

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What is it exactly? Can we define it? Instead of expressing my own views, I will quote two objective observers:

 

Krikor Zohrab: "We, all of us, condemn prostitution. Yet, how many of us engage in it? Lawyers who perjure themselves for a few pieces of silver; journalists who sell their conscience to vested interests; doctors who prolong a useless treatment; young men who marry wealth. In what way are they different from common prostitutes?"

 

Bertrand Russell: "Often and often, a marriage hardly differs from prostitution, except being harder to escape from."

 

ON PATRIOTISM

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What is the difference between an Armenian who is proud to be an Armenian and a Turk who is proud to be a Turk?

If we ask this question to an Armenian, he will say the Turk doesn’t know any better because he has been brainwashed by his political leadership; and if we ask the same question to a Turk, he will return the compliment. If, on the other hand, we were to ask a third party, say, a Patagonian, a Nigerian or Cambodian who knows as much about Armenian or Turkish history as an Armenian and Turk know about Patagonian, Nigerian or Cambodian history, my guess is they will say there has been some brainwashing on both Armenian and Turkish sides.

How to solve this puzzle? The jury is still out on that one.

(By the way, I am not a revisionist: I know the Turkish version to be a big lie; but I also have every reason to suspect that the version of our own politicians cannot be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth because politics and truth are incompatible concepts.)

What is patriotism? It is a form of prostitution in which we surrender our minds and souls to our politicians, in exchange of what? The license to hate the enemy; to feel morally superior; to prepare the grounds for a future war; the license to kill and the privilege to die.

[ara baliozian]

QUESTIONS IN SEARCH OF AN ANSWER

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What could be more universal than the need to assert superiority?

What could be more symptomatic of inferiority than assessing oneself as superior?

Has anyone ever seen a truly superior man asserting superiority?

Is there a single human being on earth who has not beheld the contemptible spectacle of a poor devil trying desperately to assert superiority and convincing no one, not even himself?

There you have it, my friends: our situation.

Sometimes we forget that an outsider – be he an American, Canadian or Patagonian – does not have to study the past to know what happened to us or how trustworthy our testimony is: all he has to do is read about our visceral disagreements in our partisan press and observe the ease with which each side distorts reality in order to score points or to assert superiority.

And what about us on this forum? In what way are we better or more tolerant or more civilized than our gutter press?

[ara baliozian]

DEMENTED FASCISTS

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In a letter to the editor of our local paper today I am informed that Canada is run by "demented fascists." Such letters by disgruntled readers appear more or less regularly in our paper and I assume many other papers in Canada; but as far as I know none of these irate citizens has ever threatened to go back to Scotland, Ireland or England.

Again and again I hear the complaint that our newspapers stress the negative and ignore the positive: they prefer to write about murderers, rapists, hookers, burglars, child molesters and mafia hitmen and completely ignore thousands of law-abiding citizens who work hard and help their fellow men.

I have always wondered why is it that if there is such a high demand for good news, no one has thought of publishing such a newspaper; or perhaps after a few issues such newspapers have gone bankrupt because the demand is phony.

Sometimes I too am urged to stress the positive by self-appointed commissars of culture (and here I resist the temptation of calling them demented fascists), who completely ignore the fact that our political parties and the papers they control do that already: they invariably stress the positive aspects of their performance and completely ignore the negative. My question is: why should I join their chorus to make it unanimous, especially when I disagree with everything they print, including their commas.

[ara baliozian]

KISS ME, I AM ARMENIAN!

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In all religions and cultures pride is seen as a vice. I wonder, why is it that

some armenians think to say I AM PROUD TO BE AN ARMENIAN is okay.

How about I AM HUMBLE TO BE AN ARMENIAN?

As a matter of fact, speaking for myself,

I am very, very humble!

I am very, very humble because millions of my ancestors were massacred and suffered countless humiliations in order that I may survive. In order that we may all survive.

And what have we been doing with our survival?

We have driven half of the Armenian population from Armenia into exile; thousands of decent Armenian women into prostitution; and in the diaspora, we have alienated the majority of Armenians and driven them to assimilate.

And why?

Because of corrupt, incompetent and tribal leaders whose #1 concern is #1.

Yes, my friends, I am a very, very humble armenian because I consider myself unworthy of the sacrifice made by our ancestors.

[ara baliozian]

DARTS OR BOOMERANGS?

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Because I dared to sympathize with decent Armenian women who are forced into prostitution, I received several anonymous messages by self-assessed "proud Armenians" who called my mother a prostitute.

I should be offended, but I am not.

What kind of person writes anonymously?

Obviously, a coward who is ashamed or afraid to identify himself; and an anonymous coward who brags about being a proud Armenian also admits to being a liar. I suggest such a cowardly liar is in no position to consider himself morally superior to anyone, including prostitutes.

Most prostitutes are coerced into prostitution: they have little choice in the matter. But no one can coerce anyone to being a cowardly liar. This is a choice he makes himself; and because he cannot see that his insults are also confessions (confessions whose implied meaning escapes him) he must also be a self-satisfied, loud-mouth arrogant fool.

[ara baliozian]

THE MAHATMA SPEAKS

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On Armenians who consider it their patriotic duty to hate Turks and, by extensions, fellow Armenians who do not share their blanket hatred: "Hatred injures the haters, never the hated."

 

On those eager to assert moral superiority: "Only when one sees one’s own mistakes with a convex lens, and does just the opposite in the case of others, that one is able to arrive at a just relative estimate of the two."

 

On cowards who insult fellow Armenians anonymously: "A coward does not deserve to be a member of a society of men and women."

[ara baliozian]

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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Zarian thought a writer could be truly creative only in his own homeland; and yet, his most productive years were spent in Istanbul, Paris, Venice, Milan, New York and Beirut, and his most unhappy and arid years in Yerevan.

 

More often than not, we are the only victims of our own misconceptions.

 

We survived the Turks and the Bolsheviks: we now confront a far more invincible adversary: us!

 

I may react to an honest disagreement but not to an insult. How does one react to an insult without going down to the gutter where the other has the advantage?

 

If we cannot change reality, the least we can do is try to understand it. To try to change it without understanding it is an enterprise that is bound to backfire. Case in point: our revolutionaries at the turn of the century.

 

I don’t expect to be loved or admired by those whose charlatanism I have exposed. The most I can hope to expect from them is to be read…and as long as they go on insulting me, I know they have been reading me, for which many thanks!

[ara baliozian]

DEFINITIONS

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PATRIOTISM: Love of one’s country and culture; and respect for everyone else’s love of his country and culture.

 

FASCIST PATRIOTISM: Hatred of the enemy and ignorance of all cultures, including one’s own. A fascist patriot treats a discussion forum as if it were an outlet for his hatred, some kind of chamberpot wherein to deposit his verbal diarrhea. Hence their unbearable stench. If it weren’t for our fascist patriots and the institutions they have usurped, most Armenians would grow up to be more or less decent human beings.

 

CAPITALISM: According to Werner Sombart: "Where sex is denied expression, wealth begins to be hoarded."

[ara baliozian]

TWO REPLIES

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1.

An outraged reader demands to know how can any Armenian love Turks after what they have done to us.

Gentle reader: no one is asking you to love rapists and killers: only saints can do that and none of us qualifies….What I have been saying is that, we either make hatred the central motif of our collective existence or concentrate our efforts on solving our many problems in a creative way: which is something we can do only if we love one another more than we hate the Turks.

At this point I can’t resist the temptation of quoting the unforgettable words of a hippie from the 1960s: "How can you talk love to middle-aged creeps who hate you?"

 

2.

To the reader who posted an anonymous message in which he accuses me of being a racist who hates Arabs and Gypsies: Yes, I remember you too. I hope you can now read and understand simple sentences in the English language.

[MJ]

ara baliozian

Member

Member # 271

posted August 20, 2001 11:08 AM

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P.S.

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To be an Armenian and to expect to have the agreement of your fellow Armenians is to be in this world but not of this world. Whenever a fellow Armenian expresses surprise or even shock at my views, I am tempted to ask: Where were you born? Where did you grow up? Where do you live? In the Garden of Eden?

But even in the Garden there was a snake who didn’t see eye to eye with the Good Lord.

My advice to you is: If you want to survive as an Armenian among Armenians, don’t take yourself seriously, smile, have a good laugh at yourself and your fellow men. Life will be more fun that way.

Remember, my friend, the alternative is cancer and early death.

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ara baliozian

[MJ]

ara baliozian

Member

Member # 271

posted July 11, 2001 10:59 AM

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ARMENIANS ON ARMENIANS

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Do you want to know more about Armenians? Read about Eskimos, Patagonians, Hottentots…. Above all avoid reading Armenians on Armenians. Their views will be filtered, biased, distorted.

Compare Hagop Baronian’s Armenians with Saroyan’s: they might as well be odars to one another. Baronian’s Armenians are rascals and fools, Saroyam’s cute and harmless.

Saroyan himself was not exactly a Saroyanesque character, his son Aram tells us in his memoirs (LAST RITES). He was more of a character straight out of Dostoevsky. Not that I trust Aram’s views. He too was biased -- motivated as he was by bitterness and resentment; he did not inherit any of his father’s assets (over a million dollars, if memory serves). Please note that I am not myself personally acquainted with Aram, but judging by his books (or the one or two that I have read) he did not deserve a penny. Again, please, don’t take my word for it. I too plead bias.

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ara baliozian

[MJ]

ara baliozian

Member

Member # 271

posted April 18, 2001 12:17 PM

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THE DEVIL AND THE GOOD LORD

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Our chauvinists and partisan propagandists have a long list of historical, geographical, cultural, political and economic reasons behind every one of our failures, defeats and catastrophes; and when they run out of them, they evoke human nature -- their message being: We are beyond criticism because we are what God, in his infinite wisdom, has made us. Criticism is a waste of time and critics useless because no one has the power to unmake what God has wrought.

The fallacy in this line of sophistry consists in confusing what is human with what is subhuman. Ignorance, arrogance and stupidity are not human but subhuman; so are intolerance and greed; and so are deception, lies and propaganda. There is a difference between human nature and subhuman nature. We must extol the first and suppress the second; and if we cannot suppress it, we must call it by its right name. To ascribe the devil’s actions to God is blasphemy.

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ara baliozian

[MJ]

ara baliozian

Member

Member # 271

posted July 02, 2001 06:44 AM

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WAR AND PEACE

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Some Armenian counter-arguments are more like allergic reactions. They have nothing to do with reason and everything to do with pathology. And that may well be the root of all our conflicts.

If so far we have failed again and again to develop a consensus it’s because, unlike conflicting interests which may be reconciled, conflicting pathologies cannot.

What do people want?

Peace and prosperity.

What do political leaders want?

Power.

They want power even if it means war and massacre.

Lust for power recognizes no national or tribal barriers.

Our leaders want power even if means the slow but systematic alienation, exodus and assimilation of the majority. In what way are they different from our enemies? And if you think of this forum as a microcosm: in what way are we different from our leaders?

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ara baliozian

[MJ]

ara baliozian

Member

Member # 271

posted June 24, 2001 08:29 AM

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SOME THOUGHTS ON CORRUPTION

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Democracy also means freedom from want.

What we have in our homeland today is not democracy

but the tyranny of destitution.

Corruption is like cancer,

and charity is worse than a band-aide treatment

because it does nothing but entrench the power of the corrupt

thus legitimizing criminal conduct.

 

Instead of being feted and honored,

political leaders from the Homeland

should be mercilessly booed for their acceptance of corruption

as an inevitable fact of life that only time can cure.

 

It is a fundamental human right to live and work

in an environment free of corruption.

 

What could be more degrading for a man

than the inability to provide for his family?

What could be more oppressive than

the fascism of unemployment and poverty

without a single scintilla of hope on the horizon?

 

Charity may make the Diaspora feel good

but it is not, it cannot be, a substitute for social justice.

 

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ara baliozian

[MJ]

ara baliozian

Member

Member # 271

posted August 30, 2001 07:03 AM

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#2

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Some of my readers are disappointed, even angry, when I refuse to join the chorus of our sermonizers and speechifiers in order to make it unanimous. It doesn’t even occur to them how ridiculous, not to say absurd, their position is. Unanimity among us is like Mark Twain’s weather. Everyone talks about it but nobody does a damn thing – nobody, especially those who are in a position to do something…such as bishops. Why do we need two bishops within the same city and neighborhood? The answer must be obvious: if we needed only one, the other one will have to be discarded, or even worse, be relegated to number two position; and in case you didn’t know, number two is the most hated number among Armenians, especially those who have achieved number one status.

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ara baliozian

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, October 30, 2008

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DEFINITIONS

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VODANAVORJI: A fabricator of verses inspired by the eternal snows of Mount Ararat and related atrocities.

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ANTI-SEMITE: An Armenian who loves Jews but hates Zionists.

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ANTI-AMERICANISM: A belief system that asserts the serpent in the Garden of Eden was a CIA agent.

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ANTI-ARMENIANISM: A capital offense committed by someone who dares to question the statesmanship of our wheeler-dealers, mi-kich-pogh Panchoonies, and assorted riffraff.

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ARMENIANISM: A vaguely defined discipline that allows a charlatan, bloodsucker, or parasite to assert his superior brand of patriotism and look down at anyone who does not live up to its low standards, and when I say low I mean lower than a snake's belly full of buckshot.

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BLAME-GAME: A favorite pastime of academics who ascribe all our misfortunes, blunders, defeats, and tragedies to historic, social, environmental, and cultural factors beyond our control.

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DISSENTER: A misguided fool, an unspeakable blasphemer, and a degenerate who believes we may have had something to do in shaping our character and destiny as a nation.

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INTELLECTUAL: A species as extinct as the dodo bird.

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PUNDIT: A retard with a negative IQ who is convinced he knows and understands everything there is to know and understand about our past, present, and future, but who is incapable of telling a hole in the ground from the perforation in his derrière.

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SOVIETISM: A mindset that asserts Russians to be our “Big Brothers.”

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ANTI-SOVIETISM: A mindset that asserts Russians to be our “Big Brothers” but only in the Orwellian sense of these words.

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TURCOCENTRISM: An Orthodoxy based on the assumption that we are dependent on the goodwill, fair-play, justice, and charity of Ankara.

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OTTOMANISM: A psychological complex or a mechanism that results in the production of oreos – that is, Armenians who are Armenian on the outside and Turk on the inside. Something similar could be said of Bolshevism or Stalinism. It is no exaggeration to say that Armenians of the Diaspora are at the mercy of Ottomanized thugs as surely as Armenians of Armenia are victimized by Stalinized scumbags.

#

 

Friday, October 31, 2008

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SUPERSTITIONS

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Elsa Morante: “Women's love brings bad luck.”

That may be because everything that's good in step one may be bad in step two. Yin and yang. “No banquet under heaven is endless,” according to an old Chinese saying.

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Like Armenians, both men and women like to blame their troubles on the opposition, never on their own stupidity.

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The most famous war in in the history of mankind recounted by the greatest poet in world literature is about the abduction of a floozy. But I suspect if the same story were told by a woman, the stress would be on man's stupidity. For all we know Paris may have been a serial rapist and Helen a respectable housewife.

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Speaking of war and stupidity: there are organized religions today that are against capital punishment but for war. Figure that one out if you can.

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Speaking of floozies and man's stupidity: It is said of Antranik Zaroukian that on his return from Paris, where he was sent as a delegate by the ARF, he presented an expense account which included a line that said: “For necessary bodily functions.” When asked to explain, Zaroukian is said to have replied: “Visits to the bordello.” Somehow I find it difficult to imagine a woman delegate in the same position saying, “For services rendered by a gigolo.”

#

 

Saturday,November 1, 2008

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AS I SEE IT

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Don Marquis: “If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you. But if you really make them think, they'll hate you.”

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Even if you are as wise as Socrates and as pure in heart as Mahatma Gandhi you will have enemies who will hate you unto death. And even if you are as evil as Stalin and as fanatical and single-minded as Hitler you will have followers willing to die for you.

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I for one refuse to ascribe beastly conduct to human nature. Neither will I subscribe to the notion favored by philomorons that philosophy is a waste of time. Because if it weren't for philosophers we would be at the mercy of fools and fanatics and life would be hell on earth.

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A good autobiography is everyone's biography.

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The greatest concern of a man in power is losing it.

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The shy in life will be daring in imagination.

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To read words and sentences – nothing easier. To read ideas – that's different.

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