Posted by panch from ? (204.120.48.3) on Tuesday, April 02, 2002 at 2:11PM :
Surprised to hear a discussion about martyrdom on NPR. A professor Smith wrote a book about it. He gives three critera...the person has to be killed by the State...no private vengeance etc. The person must be given a CHOICE...a random or deliberate act of murder makes you a victim not a martyr. He mentioned Martin Luter King as being a victim and not a martyr, in any proper sense of the word. And finally...the person must believe that his or her death will serve the "cause".
That's a lot more sophisticated than mine was, but then I dropped out at the third grade.
Assyrians who were gunned down were not martyrs, they were muder victims, just as Iraqi Assyrian children who have died of starvation are not martyrs...no matter how hysterical each side wants to get. Hysteria muddles emotions, reason, and the language...and in the case of true martyrs, cheapens the experience.
Assyrians were not killed as a result of an articulated State policy...as Jesus was and as the Jews were and the Native Americans were (sort of). Assyrians were not given a choice...no one said "renounce Jesus or we'll kill you". That is our own myth, brought to you by them Phornicatin' Phuckers of the Church in order to get you to serve ALL their needs. Assyrian Christians were murdered outright...just plain killed dead...no one wanted to convert them to anything but corpses or get them to renounce anything except life. They had no choice in the matter and their deaths served no cause. The issue of serving a "Cause" is significant because an imbalanced mind that seeks to achieve Heaven by killing OR by getting killed, serves no useful purpose...unless the "Cause" is murder or self glorification through a sacrifice you HOPE will get you martyr status.
These distinctions are not made to cheapen the franchise, but because we have to make sense to other people if we ever want to make anything of ourselves as Assyrians out in the world...just as you'd want to be successful as an engineer by NOT refering to a slide rule as a washing machine.
This martyr business smacks too much of the same self serving victimhood we can't seem to get enough of...you know..."Little Atour can't play the piano too well because of Simele"...that sort of thing.
We should not encourage people to feel sorry for us...it makes us "sorry" in front of our children and neighbors who would be too embarrassed to refer to victims as martyrs. Unless you choose to be martyrs to your own sense of Victimhood...and what "cause" that serves I can't imagine...and which State is forcing that on us? I mean here in America and not in your "Turkeys Of The Mind".
If we don't get off of our assess and stop apologizing for being who we are, stop trying to "pass" for white, stop waving the flag harder than the Duracell rabbit...we just might wake up one morning to learn that all our relatives in Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Syria and anywhere else, are now called "Terrorist Supporting Nations" and our darling dark haired litlle boys and girls "suspect".
People...it has happened before, and not so long ago...it can happen again and easily too. The public monuments were supposed to serve this purpose for us, not the private whims of John and Jackie. The Shumirum in Chicago, the Hammurabi in Detroit were excellent ways to come out of our closet...to inform and educate white America which only seems to learn geography by bombing and killing, then ordering Fast Food from newly arrived refugees, victims of its ignorant world view and willingness to shoot first and read later... from people too afraid to make themselves known...until their guts are plastered all over a wall or front page.
Get over it...WE ARE AMERICANS! You don't have to be white or have your two cheeks welded together to qualify. You can look like anything, speak any language, have dark hair and big noses and STILL be covered by the Law...unless the Law changes bit by bit till people who LOOK like your child and mine become "suspects".
-- panch
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