as i see it (cont.) - Pt. II

[ara baliozian]

Friday, May 03, 2002

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

It is the easiest thing in the world

to speak in the name of God or Allah:

every bloodthirsty mullah, bloodsucking televangelist,

and child-molesting priest does it.

It is even easier to speak in the name of the Party:

every partisan, fascist, neo-commissar or crypto-Stalinist does it.

In the name of tradition?

Even an inbred moron can speak in its name

after brainwashing himself to believe

he is the sole custodian of its values, principles, and aims.

The truth?

Every fanatic and crackpot is convinced

he has a monopoly on it.

But who can truly say

he speaks in the name of the alienated and silenced majority?

-- except perhaps one who has himself been silenced and alienated.

And if such a one were to speak,

who would listen to him?

Surely not the white trash listed above.

[Hyeflyer]

AraYou are hurt by my opinion of you r writing.White trash listed above?Only Sen Vahan ,You and I have been on this thread.So are you also the white trash?Welcome to the club then.:)If you are the writer you say you are then you should be able to convey your feelings,thought and emotions and make your reader see,feel and think what you are seeing,thinking and feeling.You are a social comintator.If you are going to be one then look at the formula for success thaty all of the best social comintators use.Wether they are liked or despised they have a following of people that can not ignore them.All I have been trying to say is get on with it and REALLY say something.You have had my interest and I do believe that you can be a very popular writer if you were to SAY SOMETHING.But what the hell you wouldnt take advise from white trash,your better than that.Evan though they are some of your audiance and what is a writer without a audiance.Sorry to have wounded your ego.

[ara baliozian]

FAVORITE THINGS

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

"O God,

if I worship Thee in fear of Hell,

burn me in Hell;

or if I worship Thee in hope of Paradise,

exclude me from Paradise;

but if I worship Thee for Thine Own Sake,

withhold not Thine Everlasting Beauty."

Muslim prayer

#

"Among ten men

nine are sure to be women."

Turkish proverb

#

"A girl in good shape

is often the reason why a man is in bad shape."

Yiddish saying

#

"The summer river:

although there is a bridge,

my horse goes through the water."

A Japanese haiku

#

"The liar’s punishment is not in the least

that he is not believed,

but that he cannot believe anyone else."

G.B. Shaw

"Every man likes the smell of his own fart."

 

Icelandic proverb

[ara baliozian]

Saturday, May 04, 2002

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

#

If you have Armenian friends (and readers),

you don't need Turkish enemies (and executioners).

#

One of the conditions of Armenian friendship

is total agreement bordering on subservience.

#

Disagree with an Armenian and make an enemy for life.

#

Now that I understand Armenians better

I am having second thoughts about Turks.

#

I know now why Charents never wrote a sonnet

titled "Yes im anoush hayrenagitsneri."

#

An Armenian who tries being objective

about his fellow Armenians

will be verbally gang-raped and permanently silenced.

This is a rule with very few exceptions….

#

After saying this, I will be hated

because I will be accused of hating Armenians.

#

After brainwashing himself to believe

that he speaks the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,

an Armenian will feel authorized to deceive

not only others but also himself.

#

When was the last time you met a Saroyanesque Armenian?

Was Saroyan himself Saroyanesque?

No, according to his son Aram (see his memoirs, LAST RITES).

[ara baliozian]

ANTI-SERMON

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

#

The most incomprehensible thing in the world:

why do some people exist?

#

God does not create charlatans.

Dupes do. But then, who creates dupes?

Charlatans, of course.

It’s a marriage made in hell.

#

Likewise, God does not create tyrants;

subservience does.

Which may explain why,

when asked what was in his view the most repellent human failing,

Marx replied: "Subservience."

#

Marxism is good in so far as it exposes

the abuses of capitalism;

bad in so far as it legitimized the tyranny of commissars

and the abuses of state capitalism.

Which may also explain why Marx said:

"I am not a Marxist."

#

Christianity is good in so far it says

loving your enemy

(an impossible, not to say an absurd proposition)

makes as much sense in the long run as hating him.

#

Christianity is bad in so far as it legitimized popism

and all its illegitimate offspring -- from Protestantism to

televangelism.

#

Prophets and philosophers are useful

in so far as they share their understand of reality,

dangerous in so far as they legitimize despotism.

[ara baliozian]

my reference to white trash did not refer to anyone on this forum.

Relax! Paranoia is bad for your health. i have been writing for Armenians for 25 years now and writing on a full-time basis too. so i should be entitled to have accumulated my own set of experiences and with them my own encounters with white trash!

[ara baliozian]

Sunday, May 05, 2002

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

#

Philosophy, pure mathematics, music:

they fascinate us even when they are

devoid of all practical application

because they make visible

the invisible movements of human intelligence.

#

"Laughter," I read today in an encyclopedia of humor,

"is the best laxative."

Likewise, an understanding of history

is the best problem solver.

#

I no longer pray, but if I did, I would say:

"Please God, give me better critics."

#

A chauvinist who feels fully justified to hate

a fraction of his fellow men

as well as fellow countrymen in the name of patriotism is, to me,

the best argument against chauvinism.

#

Yiddish proverb: "A fool is his own informer."

[ara baliozian]

HUMANS AND PARAGONS

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

There are two kinds of people:

the human beings who are fully aware of the fact

that they have committed their share of blunders in the past

and they will commit more of them in the future,

and the paragons of virtue and wisdom

who ascribe all their failures, defeats, and problems

on foreign agencies.

The humans know that life

is a continuum of unique situations and challenges

and the past cannot always provide all the answers.

The paragons think the solution to all their problems

consists in changing the world

and everyone who doesn't see eye to eye with them.

To the humans, the acquisition of knowledge

is an open ended process.

To the paragons knowledge is limited

and what they don't know

can't be worth knowing.

The humans sometimes lose and sometimes win.

The paragons are perennial losers,

and even when they win they lose

because their victories are based on a perverse vision of reality.

In their judgments, the humans are capable

of exercising some degree of objectivity

(which means the ability to think against oneself).

The paragons live in a world of

illusions, misconceptions, and prejudices.

The paragons are symptomatic of narcissism,

appalling arrogance, and total ignorance of human nature.

The humans are more open-minded and receptive.

It is not that the paragons are prone to commit blunders;

rather, their entire life from alpha to omega is a blunder;

so that even when they speak in favor of life,

what they really say is "We don't deserve to live!"

[ara baliozian]

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

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

Whenever I see a list of our writers

butchered by the Turks in 1915,

I am reminded of the fact that

the man who prepared this list for the Turkish authorities

was an Armenian.

I am also reminded of the fact that

two decades later history repeated itself

in our homeland when

another generation of Armenian intellectuals

was slaughtered and this time around

the executioners were Armenians.

But that’s not all.

Intellectuals in the Diaspora were also

ruthlessly silenced

by our own political leadership

who, by emphasizing Ottoman and Soviet criminal conduct,

hope to minimize and cover up their own.

And the tragedy is that,

our own historians, who are fully aware of these facts,

prefer to forget them and by doing so

they degrade themselves to the level of partisan propagandists.

[ara baliozian]

DO ARMENIANS TRUST

OR RESPECT ONE ANOTHER?

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

Speaking for myself:

the only Armenians I trust and respect

are the marginalized and alienated ones:

Armenians who are fully aware of the fact

that things have gone terribly wrong

and there isn't much they can do about it.

As for the others – the sermonizers and speechifiers

and their assorted dupes:

if any one of them moved in my neighborhood

I would seriously consider moving out.

[ara baliozian]

SCHOOLS OF ARMENIAN CRITICISM

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

Let others speak of structuralist or deconstructionist criticism;

we Armenians have our own down-to-earth

and sometimes even deep-in-the-cesspool schools.

What follows is a brief sampling with concise definitions:

 

THE CHAUVINIST-CRAPOLA SCHOOL

consists in ignoring the text and preaching patriotism

simply because the preacher-critic

loves the sound of his own voice.

 

THE COMMISSAR SCHOOL:

usually practiced by partisan editors,

it simply states:

"You either recycle our crap or we shoot you…

but since we are not allowed to shoot,

we will cut your tongue out,

but only metaphorically speaking of course,

and by the time we are through

you will be a Soviet-style non-person –

you may know you exist but no one else will.

 

THE ONE-UPMANSHIP SCHOOL

whose sole aim is to assert superiority

without any evidence or, for that matter,

reference to the text.

 

THE NAME-CALLING or

JERK/FOOL/FILTH or again

MONOSYLLABIC SCHOOL

needs no definition

because it is self-explanatory.

The only drawback with this branch of criticism

is that it is deficient in the development section.

 

THE WHITE-TRASH SCHOOL

does its work from the gutter

and its horizons never rise above it.

 

THE INBRED-MORON SCHOOL

belongs to our Ottoman tradition

and in that sense it is Armenian in name only.

[ara baliozian]

THEORIES

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

#

An Armenian discussion forum

makes a good Armenian better

and a bad Armenian worse.

#

Writing for Armenians is like

making it in New York:

if you can make it there,

you can make it anywhere!

#

Some readers appear to be

so bored with their own existence that

their only pleasure, it seems,

is reading and insulting writers they hate.

#

What do our partisans and

dealers of chauvinist crapola dream about?

My guess is,

they dream of a world without critics

and without an opposition

where they can grow a square little mustache

beneath their cyrano noses and

strut about barking "Heil this!" and "Heil that!"

and above all "Heil myself!"

#

Armenians who belong to the white-trash

and inbred-moron schools of criticism

were once upon a time victims of bullies,

so they now get even

by bullying others from a safe distance –

all verbal testosterone but no cojones.

[ara baliozian]

Wednesday, May 08, 2002

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

Some truths must be repeated again and again

until they sink in and make an indelible impression.

Nationalism, anti-intellectualism, and anti-Semitism

are the three pillars of fascism,

and all three are alive and well among Armenians,

including on this very forum.

What is even more disturbing

to the point of being sinister

is the total lack of awareness.

Nationalism and chauvinism are seen as virtues;

anti-intellectualism and its legitimate offspring, censorship,

parade as defense of patriotism;

and anti-Semitism struts under the banner of

anti-Zionism or pro-Arabism.

I see nothing wrong in questioning or criticizing

Israeli or American policies:

Jews and Americans do it all the time.

But I see something horribly sickening

in attacking Israel and the USA

in the name of Arab despotism, fanaticism, and fascism.

[ara baliozian]

ON FASCISM (II)

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

World War II was declared by the Fascists.

It claimed 50 million lives.

The Fascists lost but fascism did not die.

It survived in Spain under Franco,

in the USSR under Stalin,

and in China under Mao, among other countries.

Spain is now a democracy,

the USSR collapsed,

and China is in transit.

But pseudo-democratic, undemocratic,

anti-democratic and fascist regimes

continue to outnumber the democracies today.

Fascism continues to be popular

not only in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America

but also in Europe and the USA.

There are many people today

who enjoy all the privileges that a democracy guarantees

but who support fascism and its three pillars:

nationalism, anti-intellectualism and anti-Semitism or racism.

Reason, appeals to common sense and decency, and

the lessons of the past are powerless against it.

Another world war may or may not eradicate it completely.

Fascism will be with us for as long as man

continues to think and feel with his crocodilian brain.

[ara baliozian]

Thursday, May 09, 2002

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

#

Based on my own personal experience,

I don't know what it feels like being hated by a Turk,

but I have become an expert on what it’s like

being hated by fellow Armenians.

#

When I don't like a writer,

I seldom go beyond page one or even line two.

Which is why I am astonished

at the perversity of some readers

who detest me but who continue not only to read

but also to comment on everything I write.

#

Memo to my critics:

As long as you keep reading me,

I will be in business.

#

You cannot reason with fascists

because fascism is another religion

and its credo is based on hatred –

hatred of free speech

and hatred of the enemy –

both foreign and domestic…

especially domestic.

#

Only saints may love their enemies.

The best the rest of us poor mortals may succeed in doing

is hating them less

by understanding them more.

[ara baliozian]

WHY ARE WE PERENNIAL LOSERS

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

Because we are motivated by hatred

and obsessed with thoughts of revenge.

Every other word in our press is

either Genocide or Turks.

Now consider the role of these two words

in creative Armenians like Aram Khachaturian,

William Saroyan, and the two Arlens.

Khachaturian’s music is full of joy and exuberance.

Saroyan’s love encompasses all of humanity,

including the Turks (he once said that

he felt sorry for the Turks).

The central characters in Arlen pиre’s fiction

are members of the British aristocracy;

and after PASSAGE TO ARARAT,

Arlen Jr. hardly ever mentions Armenians,

let alone Turks.

One could make a similar case

for all creative Armenians – from Rouben Mamoulian

and Alan Hovhannes to Henri Troyat,

Arthur Adamov and Nina Berberova.

Obsession with past grievances

is symptomatic in all perennial losers

and their morally bankrupt leaders

who lead by empty rhetoric,

and they do this because they have lost their creative impetus

and are incapable of confronting present challenges

(such as exodus from the Homeland

and assimilation in the Diaspora).

We are perennial losers

because we have allowed ourselves

to be deceived, flimflammed, and bamboozled

by charlatans who are themselves unaware of the fact that

they are worse than losers,

they are dishonest losers.

[ara baliozian]

IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, SKIP IT!

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

As a child I was brainwashed to believe

that the Turks were subhuman

because compared to Armenian contributions to world culture,

theirs was next to nothing – less than nothing

if you consider massacres a negative.

By the same token, one could ask:

Compared to Jews,

what have Palestinians contributed?

Speaking for myself,

the idea of rating a nation by its contributions to world culture

is nonsense. I prefer to judge nations and individuals

by their degree of subservience and self-reliance.

Like the Palestinians, we Armenians were subservient

to the Turks and now (again like the Palestinians)

we are subservient to our own

corrupt, inept, and tribal leadership.

We have at no time experienced freedom

in the sense in which freedom is defined in a democracy – that is,

a power structure that defends and protects

the human rights of its citizens

regardless of race, color, and creed.

Nothing stifles creativity like oppression and subservience;

and nothing liberates it like freedom.

But as our own Raffi says somewhere,

the benefits of freedom are truly appreciated only by the free.

Which is why my faith in democracy is such

that I'd rather be ruled by a democratically elected sinner or fool

than a fascist saint or genius.

[ara baliozian]

ENEMIES OF FREEDOM

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

The whole point of Marx’s CAPITAL is to prove that

capital dehumanizes not only the worker

but also the capitalist and society as a whole.

The same applies to those who use their freedom

to violate the human rights of another.

 

ANTI-SEMITISM

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

The only time an anti-Semite will agree with you

is when you join him in repeating his favorite mantra,

"Death to the Jews!"

Unless you do that, he will hate you

with the same intensity that he hates the Jews.

It must be a punishing experience to hate an enemy

they cannot defeat.

Anti-Semitism, like so many other aberrations,

is a transgression with its own inbuilt punishment.

 

THE BIRTH OF FASCISM

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

"No matter what you say,

you will never succeed in changing my mind!" a reader writes.

But I am not in the business of changing anyone’s mind.

All I aim to do is remind you of the fact that

there are other people out there

with their own ideas that may not be the same as yours.

It does not necessarily follow that you are right and they wrong.

EGO

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

There are days when I cannot help reflecting that

we have not yet completely emancipated from the Age of Apes.

The ego is bad enough, but the ego of an ape!…

 

FREUD

***********

Again and again I am reminded of Freud’s memorable observation

that most people, regardless of who or what they profess to be,

are no better than riffraff.

 

DEMOCRACY

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

To how many of my critics I could say:

I am not your enemy, democracy is.

[Sip]

Yes they do (affect their potential for development) I tried very very and very long to be good in basketball ... I suck

 

Does my 'race' play NO role in my suckitude in basketball? I think it does.

[ara baliozian]

AS THEY SEE US

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

In his PASSAGE TO ARARAT,

Michael J. Arlen advances the following theses:

(one) there is no such thing as Armenian culture;

(two) Armenian nationalism makes as much sense

as Turkish nationalism;

(three) Armenian attitude towards the Genocide

should be let bygones be bygones;

and (four) whenever history gave them a chance,

Armenians behaved as ruthlessly as Turks.

Nothing unusual so far.

What is unusual is that

even Armenians who believe the exact opposite

promoted, lionized, idolized, and bragged about Arlen’s book

and made of it a best-seller!

In the final volumes of his STUDY OF HISTORY,

Toynbee writes that,

when he described Jewish as well as Armenian religious belief systems

as "fossils" ( meaning, brain-dead )

the Jews attacked him

but Armenians said nothing.

Could it be because Armenians don't read?

or when they read, they don't understand what they read

even when the writer knows how to write

and what he writes is accessible to anyone

who knows how to read.

But if the writer is Armenian,

he is told he doesn't know how to write

or he hates Armenians.

[ara baliozian]

Monday, May 13, 2002

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

When Michael Arlen Sr. identified himself as an Armenian

to his English friends, they asked him:

"Are you really an Armenian?"

His reply:

"Why would anyone say he is an Armenian

if he wasn't one?"

Good question.

One of Gostan Zarian’s great-great-sons

introduced himself in a recent e-mail with the words:

"I am not an Armenian. My mother is Austrian."

How well I understand his pride

in identifying his mother (and by extension, himself)

as a non-Armenian!

Once upon a time I was taught to be proud of my identity,

but the more I deal with my fellow Armenians,

the less proud I become;

and I can already foresee the day

when confused with Aramaeans or Rumanians

(as I invariably am by Canadians),

I will not bother correcting them.

[ara baliozian]

WHY I NO LONGER READ AND REPLY

TO SOME OF MY CRITICS

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

Because it is a waste of time

arguing with someone whose number one concern

is settling old scores or getting even.

Because it is an even bigger waste of time

to argue with ideologues and men of faith

whose number one concern is to proselytize.

An -ism (be it fundamentalism, Stalinism, chauvinism, or fascism)

is a labyrinth within a closed system of thought

with neither an end nor an exit.

If the combined forces of the Allies in World War II

could not eradicate fascism,

(and its three pillars:

nationalism, anti-intellectualism, and anti-Semitism)

what chance does a minor scribbler like myself have?

An ideology cannot be defeated

even when it is crushed by military might or,

like Stalinism, it collapses on its own rotten foundations.

Perhaps the best solution is

to let them fight one another

until they are exhausted and become irrelevant –

very much like the orthodoxies and heresies of the Middle Ages.

[ara baliozian]

EXISTENTIALISM 101

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

There is no such thing as Armenianism in the abstract.

There are only Armenians

with their own particular and unique sets of experiences.

Disagreements begin when one says to the other:

"My experiences are better than yours."

Which is a claim anyone can make

but no one can prove.

We are therefore condemned to learn from one another –

bad news to our sermonizers and speechifier!

 

EPIDEMIC

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

The most dangerous epidemic today

is not AIDS but the proliferation of cliches,

whose aim is to simplify, distort, and deceive.

 

WITNESS

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

I am a source of disappointment to some readers

because I prefer the role of a witness

to that of a sermonizer or speechifiers.

 

ARMENIANS AND TURKS

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

Someday, say in ten or a hundred years,

Armenians may come to terms with Turks,

but will Armenians ever come to terms with Armenians?

[ara baliozian]

Tuesday, May 14, 2002

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

#

"Blessed be the peacemakers" makes sense only

if we think of it as the second half of a statement

whose first half reads: "Cursed be the war makers."

#

No matter how good an idea,

some will argue against it;

and no matter how bad an idea,

some will argue for it.

#

Some men fall so low that

in mathematical terms they bear a negative sign

and what prevents them from achieving

a positive status is their refusal to pass through zero,

or, in existential terms, to experience nothingness,

which is not something that the ego can experience.

#

Stalinism shattered Armenianism in the Homeland

as surely as Ottomanism shattered it in the Diaspora.

What remains is a poisonous residue

of "treason and betrayal" (Raffi).

Armenianism is a fiction of our imagination,

which is why no two Armenians agree on it.

#

Whenever I read about Turks and the Genocide in our press

I cannot help wondering if we equate Armenianism

with hunger for revenge masquerading as thirst for justice;

or love for one another

with hatred for the Turk,

and a hatred so all-consuming that

it spills over on our fellow Armenians.

[ara baliozian]

A MATTER OF CHOICE

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

Being educated within a power structure or system

means being to some degree indoctrinated and even brainwashed.

Being brainwashed may thus be said to be

an inevitable part of life and the human condition.

What is not inevitable but a matter of choice

is allowing oneself to be brainwashed by an alien system

such as Marxism, Stalinism, jihadism,

Maoism, mullahism or moronism.

 

WHAT WE DON'T HAVE

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

We have political parties and organizations

that emphasize Turkish violations of human rights.

What we now need is an organization

that exposes Armenian violations

against fellow Armenians.

 

EPITAPH

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

Brainwashed to kiss ass

he taught himself to kick it

and discovered to his delight

that kicking it

was more fun

than kissing it.