Posted by panch from customer-148-233-71-104.uninet.net.mx (148.233.71.104) on Monday, February 17, 2003 at 5:41PM :
ia....four
Picking up where I never left off from...there isn't anything "wrong" with Christianity as a religion...there isn't anything wrong with any of them. It's only people who screw them up but let that go. What's wrong is trying to equate any religion with an ethnic group or nation, making a pre-requisite of it for inclusion. It may have been the way things were way back then, but it causes a whole lot of mischief in this day when we all travel and live everywhere. Even the meaning of "German" or "Italian" is changing, while "American" was open to almost everyone from the start. The most modern nations may well have advanced this far because they allow the best and brightest in, doesn't matter where you come from in a generation or to you can be one of them...witness how many Christian Assyrians get permanent errections at becomming American citizens.
Our Christian Assyrians are trying to do the impossible, the silly, the impracticable...they're insisting that you have to be Christian to be really Assyrian...and even those like Paul who are as terminally Christian as the rest but have the good sense to allow the possibility that Assyrians come in all flavors...still fall into the Christian argument for a "national home"...because they refuse to accept the fact that Assyrians don't have to play by anyone's rules to be Assyrians...and that they already have a national home. Neither do they have to remain at an arrested state of development in which they deny any validity to Islamic Assyrian history in BetNahrain for the last 1300 years. Afro-Americans sure as hell haven't felt welcome or comfortable in America since they arrived by ball and chain but it's still their country as much as anyone else's.
It's a bit like the silly posture the United States got itself twisted into when it refused to "recognize" China...because it was an ungodly Communist nation, substituting the tiny, by comparison, island of Formosa/Taiwan for the much harder to miss mainland China. These things make you look and act dumb.
There is a national home of the Assyrians already, there always has been and there always will be...whether any Christians live in or not and by whatever name it goes, it's called Iraq. The number of Christians residing in Iraq or Syria or Turkey has nothing to do with how many Assyrians live there. So...while a religion such as Christianity may be innocent enough, its use by a disaffected lot of ne'er do wells and slighted Mama's boys with delusions of ancient grandeur tied to overactive glands shouldn't obscure the facts...and neither should they be allowed to chase the rest of us from the stage just because they're meaner, uglier, louder or more vicious than the rest of us.
We don't need a "national home" other than the one we have already. What we have to learn is not to listen to the siren song of Western Christian promises of friendship and support...which is based entirely on the notion that religion, again, is the determining factor for us Assyrians...when in reality it turns out to be the vehicle by which we get shafted again and again. It isn't as if America, Britain or Germany refuse on principle to make war on or betray Christians...so we can trust them to watch out for us. Christian nations and offcials are as nasty and brutal as any other. We need to learn to be better citizens of the homelands we have already and not go calling down death and destruction and aiding and abetting any Christian nation that decides to bomb our Muslim neighbors because we don't get the respect we feel we deserve...or due consideration for our religionreligionreligionreligion.
Bottom line is that so long as we remain befuddled in this infantile labyrinth where Hanna defines words as he needs to and Aprim spins wool, we're not going to matter much anywhere anyway. The spooky thing is that these "lovers of Assyria" would prefer us all to remain barefoot, pig ignorant and disenfranchised with an occasional martyr or fifty...but be "pure", rather than have us live side by side with our Muslim brothers and sisters in peace. That's the really scary part of these kinds of patriots. And they aren't "patriots" at all...which implies a relationship to a country or nation. Their relation to the Muslim countries they come from is more like that of a real "traitor", that might be the reason they level that charge agianst anyone they meet...their zeal is all religious and they are indeed more religious zealots than any kind of "patriots". The State Department quickly figured out just what we were about and left Ex Senator Ex Nimrod begging them for some attention, "please". The only reason Hanna, Peter, Firas, Ferd Aprim, the Ghassbag and the boys matter is for their negative impact...there isn't anything constructive they're ever going to be able to do...the world doesn't sit up and listen to people such as these...they know it and suffer justly. But their personal slights and sense of being affronted and ignored can't be the basis of a "National Question"...which is all these opposition and "political" groups have at their core...that's why they squablle and spit and roar like little children...because they ARE little children...children who never managed to received the slobbering attention from the world they got from their parents and feel horribly misjudged and robbed of their due rewards.
Their impact is a negative one because they make the most Assyrian "noise"...they talk the part more than the rest of us...they fire off silly letters where the rest of us would bite our tongues. They've been able to take over the Palace of Ashur and turn it into a nursery complete with National Diapers only because the rest of us left. They can only "be" Assyrian in the absence of a more sensible approach. You can see they can't discuss or argue or brook any opposition...just like the darlings their parents told them they were...always in the right or they'd hold their breath, turn blue and delete and ban. If it was possible to delete and ban and censor ones way to greatness and a country, they'd have gotten one long ago.
All any of us have to do is just show up, and the game is over with them...as you can see how brave and dead certain Ghassbag sounds only when he can delete and not answer any opposition. If he or Firas or Hanna were as willing to engage as we are, if they were as welcoming of dissent and even an out and out crud like Andreas as we are...they might have some basis on which to claim descent from the Assyrians. But, as it stands now, the way they behave and carry on...they've got to be kidding. They'll argue with anyone stupider than they are and Peter will issue brave sounding ultimatums and threats to "get out while you can" but In any open ended and free engagement...face to face that is and not behind your back...they'll lose and lose it every time.
And they know it.
-- panch
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