Posted by pancho (148.244.221.56) on October 30, 2001 at 11:48:38:
Protesting and Attacking seem to be the two activities here. Let’s take protesting first. I don’t know when exactly or how, protesting became an activity, I mean something active. It’s one thing to protest by laying down in traffic in front of a truck full of bombs meant for a village in Vietnam, knowing damn well that after they arrest you and haul you away the cops are gonna kick the crap out of you and say you fell down at the station. It’s altogether another kind of protest to press a button on your keyboard and add your protest to a document someone else wrote anyway and for which you’ll never be asked to muss your hair. The one is to the other as a gnat is to an elephant’s ass.
Take Ross as a case in point. It was certainly a step in the right direction to call for a campaign of protest against Ross and his employers…US. Several of these sites provided the full means to do it, all the reader had to do was click. Unfortunately, the brave words were all that was forthcoming. By the time the debate rolled around, there was not a mention of it anywhere unless a reader posted it. The ones who run these thingies said never a word, urged nothing. It’s as if the bolt was shot, the fervor gone at the pressing of a button.
But of course there’s more to it than that. There was the little problem of who was meeting Ross in debate, let’s not be completely stupid about these things, at least not any longer. Why don’t we just come out and admit that it is far more important who speaks up for us than it is who attacks us. To the majority of you I was the worse of the two…my move to defend us was dreaded more than what Ross had done. Whatever Ross said or wrote, however the college chose to dismiss us and add insult to injury, still it galled people more to think that I would be the one speaking up for Assyrians. Many, including Hanna, took grim satisfaction in ignoring the event, though they yelp often enough about the grave injustices done to Assyrians in 1345, feeling thereby that they had struck a blow for justice…at an Assyrian…while the dog of a professor got clean away with it. The whole thing boiled down to Get The Assyrian…which went right along with what Ross had in mind in the first place…Ross and his sap of an Aramean and that Ghassman.
I got a kick out of two ACTIVISTS grousing on bethsuryoyo’s special place for these wild types, in fear they’ll wreck the furniture at the more demure and intellectual site where Hanna stalks around with his knickers hiked up looking for broken rules, when they opined that I was electing myself the Grat Leader of the whole affair and found fault with the fact that I went to Los Angeles, gathered signatures, appeared at the college the next day, secured a meeting with the president and all concerned parties on the day finals began and got them to agree to a debate when they didn’t have to and followed up with another trip there and a debate at which Ross had to sit quietly and listen to things that weren’t as easy to dismiss as all those clicked buttons had been. They thought it was for personal glory that I did this…well I’ve been working in this community for twenty years in ways none of you ever will and I can tell you there is no glory in this community…only meekness and a longing to be stepped on. Your father and children will be hauled up and every mean trick imaginable done to you if you work for the glory of this friggin community…as it stands, or rather crawls, now.
Activists were pissed off because I took action. They have brought their own definitions to everything, and they’ve brought them from the countries they left or were forced out of because these definitions didn’t work there either. Here, they are FREE at last…but it doesn’t seem to mean freedom as anyone else would understand it either. In a democracy you are free to get EJICAYTED and then you may speak out…these guys skip that all important step and go right on to speak without ever being the wiser or benefiting from an open and free society. It is the freedom to become educated and speak out, not to bray whatever comes out of your head…but still, it is a sort of freedom and so buttons are clicked and protests sent and that’s the end of it. To protest something means to follow it through to its end, whatever that end may be. To send letters of protest only to have them ignored or glanced over and tossed out makes things worse, for it confirms the people who offended you in their original opinion that you matter not at all, since you seem to matter so little to yourself.
By ignoring the debate and taking satisfaction that no one turned out to SUPPORT ME, you dummies….you only proved to Ross that you matter not at all, not even to yourselves… that he was correct in thinking he could write and say what he pleased about Assyrians. You don’t have to LIKE the one who leads the army, you only have to want him to win for you. As a matter of fact there isn’t a general you would care to have tea with but you would want to lend your support so he can do his job, which is not protecting his own ass alone but yours as well. But if our Christian people understood that, they wouldn’t find themselves in the hopeless tangle they are in today, today when one priest says to the other…pass me the blonde one.
Assyrians never acted this way, they never sent letters of protest to those who’d offended them or robbed them of their good name. At least it didn’t stop with letters alone or warnings. They took action and they didn’t choose their captains or generals for their popularity with the least educated, most fearful and least militant sectors of society. They chose those who could swing a sword, shoot a bow, ride a horse and plan a campaign. We have many Assyrians who could do all those things, but they’ve been chased away because as tough as they are for battle, their heart breaks at ingratitude and pettiness wears away their souls. The one who was fit for the debate was whichever one seized the initiative and got the damn thing scheduled…it wasn’t a contest of intellectual giants, it settled nothing technically by itself as the field is still open to interpretation and ambiguity and will be for a long time. What it did achieve is that it showed that anyone making those sorts of unsubstantiated claims can expect a visit and not just letters…that the visit might result in a public forum where this same person will have to repeat those insulting statements to an audience of those he insulted..and THAT would have been the victory here…the only possible one and the best one.
Instead you all took satisfaction from kicking the legs out from under one of your OWN…which is what you ever have done when anyone dared stand up for us and I’ll tell you why you do it. The Christian religion you are so pleased to have turned your own great one in for, has taught you to take satisfaction from humiliation. No really proud man or woman or child can get into heaven, so you believe. Heaven is reserved for the meek the self effacing the humble and humiliated and the more dirt you eat here on earth the more ambrosia will be yours in heaven. To exhibit pride in oneself or ones heritage is almost a sign of doom with you, a sure bet that one will be consigned to that other place where all proud people go and to which I can’t wait to get.
While you may make some sort of protest when a professor slanders you or a knife is put to your child’s throat, in the end you will relent because it is by accepting the will of such a god that you expect to be rewarded. Who else would trade on their children’s lives for the promise of a reward of an infinite eternity to contemplate their vileness in. Only it isn’t seen as vileness at all, it is beatitude and acceptance of gods loving grace. Can you not see what would have to happen when any people who believe they get to heaven by submitting their necks meet any troop of boys who believe they will make it to heaven by doing the slitting. From the day you accepted this notion your doom was sealed. Christ, your exemplar went to his fate quietly, uncomplaining. You complain as you go…but you still go.
Assyrians never did that, this one wont.