Commissars

[ara baliozian]

Friday, July 11, 2003

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Commissars are not uniquely Soviet phenomena.

Every other Armenian I meet in the Diaspora these days

harbors the ambitions of a commissar who given the power

would be as ruthless in his dealings with dissidents as Stalin.

*

In the same way that we speak of

“Red” and “White” massacres

(massacres in the Ottoman Empire

and assimilation in the Diaspora)

we could also speak of “Red” and “White” purges:

Stalinist purges in the Homeland

and the expulsion and alienation by our political parties

of actual and potential members of the party

in the Diaspora.

*

Speaking for myself:

I consider membership in one of our political parties

as an unmistakable symptom

of political HIV and moral syphilis.

*

We live in a complex world

in which even the bad guys

think of themselves as good guys.

*

Question: What does it take to be a good guy

even if you happen to be a murderer of innocent civilians?

Answer: The conviction that you are acting in the name

of an abstraction which may well be

a figment of your febrile imagination –

Allah, historic imperative, patriotism, justice,

the dictatorship of the proletariat….

*

Our planet, it has been said, is an insane asylum

in which one man’s god is another’s devil.

*

If a fanatic were to agree with a moderate

he would be a moderate.

*

Even underdogs have underdogs.

So that to some underdogs,

other underdogs are top dogs.

As an Armenian writer I become aware of this

whenever an Oriental rug merchant

or a fascist hooligan decides

to share his wisdom with me,

which in our context means

issuing directive on how to live

and what to think and write.

*

We are educated to believe

killing the enemy in the name of God and Country

is a good thing.

What we are not told is that so is our enemy.

*

The nobler the idea or ideology,

the more crooks it will attract.

*

Crooks spend so much time honing their act

of projecting an honest image that

they end up appearing more honest than truly honest men.

*

The fascist mind comes in two parts:

the ideological and the criminal;

and the function of the ideological

is to camouflage the criminal.

*

Raffi: “Even those among us

who have taken it upon themselves

to educate the people are nothing but

uneducated ignoramuses.”

*

Ruben Ter-Minassian: “Our cultural achievements

and intellectual abilities may be superior to those of our neighbors,

but without solidarity we are bound to be defeated,

victimized, and exterminated.”

*

The words of an honest man don’t need definitions;

but the commas of a crook

should be carefully examined under a microscope.