observations by Ara Baliozian

Thursday, September 4, 2008
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DIARY
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When after Independence 1,500,000 Armenians chose to emigrate, did anyone ever utter the word genosuicide or see the statistical connection?
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I once received a letter from a descendant of Raffi that said, among other things, “If Raffi were alive today, he would agree with you.” The memory of that letter means more to me than the 1001 insultS hurled at me by faceless, nameless, cowardly riffraff.
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After silencing and alienating all dissenters, they say Armenians are unanimous on this point, when the only time we have achieved unanimity is in our passive acceptance of our status as perennial underdogs.
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Americans speak of spin doctors. We don't have them. Ours are all quacks.
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A Russian intellectual as quoted by Schlesinger in his JOURNALS: “I would die for democracy. But I know my people. They do not want democracy. They have never known democracy. The czars? Lenin? Stalin? Khrushchev? Brezhnev? They fear democracy. They want to be told what to do.”
If, to the above list of authoritarian rulers we add a succession of sultans that ruled us for 600 years, the picture becomes more depressing and our prospects more grim. I will never forget the university student from the Homeland who once demanded of me: “What's so great about democracy anyway?”
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Friday, September 5, 2008
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DIARY / III
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At least in one specific endeavor I can declare myself an unqualified success – that of alienating everyone who is someone in our communities. What Zarian confided to his diary and notebooks (published only posthumously) I have posted on discussion forums and websites on the Internet accessible to the whole world.
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Since God is the Great Unknown and Unknowable, all my efforts are now concentrated in placing as great a distance as possible between myself and the Devil, whose kingdom is within us as well as without – because someone else's within is my without.
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When they didn't like what I wrote, they wanted to hire me. Once, I was even asked to write the biography of a national benefactor, to which I said I did not consider myself equal to the task. And they say I lack diplomacy....
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When an Armenian is good, he is good like everyone else. But when he is bad, he is bad like a Turk – or rather, his conception of a Turk: a fat mustachioed slob in shalvars wielding a yataghan dripping with blood.
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To die in the name of an ideal is heroic, but not if the enemy does it.
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To humanize the dehumanized is a job not for intellectuals but for prophets and messiahs.
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With fools, pretend to be a fool, if that is, you want to live longer.
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At the turn of the last century in the Ottoman Empire Armenian writers wrote mostly about Armenians. In the 21st century in America they write mostly about Turks.
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Saturday, September 6, 2008
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OBSERVATIONS
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Freedom and patriotism are weasel words: they can be defined in a number of contradictory ways. Freedom could also mean the freedom to exploit and enslave; and what could be more absurd than to say my patriotism is good but my enemy’s patriotism is bad?
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How much of what we know today would be reduced to ignorance if we were to see reality through the eyes of God?
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It is not enough to voice lofty principles. One must earn the right. For myself, I shall always be grateful to Judas for not writing an ode to loyalty. But as an Armenian, I am used to reading editorials on tolerance by fanatics and listening to sermons on chastity by fornicators.
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Mountain people think their mountain is the center of the world. They view other mountains with suspicion and the valley below with contempt. They develop their own ways and consider all others as deviations. We are mountain people who refuse to give up their mountain ways even when they live on flatlands.
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Greed makes a man more cunning as well as stupid: more cunning in his employment of means to achieve his end, and more stupid in thinking he can hide his greed.
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