Posted by Re-built Farid from ? (148.233.93.127) on Monday, June 30, 2003 at 11:36AM :
Anniversary...Of Sorts
It's coming on to three years since yoors trooly burst onto the headaches of the Assrin Nayshun. The first post was at aina.org, the black eye of Assyria. Soon after I enrolled in that mad monastary, bethsuryoyo.com and for a very brief time I was resident artist at the woeful state of assyria.com and the Ghasman's forum is just a joke, like he is, the sooner gone the better. I used profane language liberally...it was the only way to counter the vulgar intellectual atmosphere on all of them. I think Hanna Hajjar was the first to ban me, supposedly for the bad language but that wasn't the real issue. The break came I think when, in exasperation, he determined that they would henceforth use, or rather make up, their own "dictionary" of the English language, where words could mean just what they needed them to. Every "argument" he used to try to derail points he couldn't answer and yet couldn't leave unanswered was more of a howler than the last one, until even he couldn't stand himself...so I was gone.
To justify himself he went over to aina and posted every single bad word I'd used, in one long list. Sort of like the Repubs who couldn't get enough of repeating the "awful" and "shameful" and "inappropriate" things Clinton had done. Hanna most likely uses all the same foul language...it's that "appearances" thing again...good Assrin boys shouldn't be HEARD talking like that. What they do among themselves, not to mention the low level of debate and analysis they encourage in public, is fine and dandy. Be dumb and write and act like an ignoramous if you have to, that brings no shame to anyone oddly enough, not in Assyria anyway...but fer chrissakes don't swear, what would Nana think.
In the end it was really the probing, the hysterical points, the unorthodox analysis none of them could tolerate. And whenever an Assrin comes up against opposition, of any sort but especilly to his pet notions of what being Assyrian is, he or she "bans"...that is, they bannish or stick their heads in a dark smelly hole they have the gall to name "Assyria". This is the reason we have so many, many political and social clubs and why, with dwindling numbers, we yet keep fracturing into ever smaller, sillier organizations...so much so that when one silly organization manages to find more silly people than the others...like a ZOWAA...it becomes the BIGGEST silly organization...and therefore the one most looked up to...for its size alone, because there IS no other reason to look favorably on any of them. When three Assrins can't agree...not a one of them reads a book or tries to inform or educate him or herself...it's easier to start another club or political party. It's all about banning and bannishing people we don't agree with. And this is supposed to prepare us for our own country...to be called Assyria, no less. What a nuthouse it would be. Without even getting close to there we're carrying on a running civil war wherever a handful of us set down.
Our way of carrying on is so Neandrathalish, so far back there, so undeveloped and primitive we can't handle a debate where there is disagreement among ourselves even...and we're going to go out into the world... be part of a commonwealth of nations? If we ever got the chance we'd try to pull it off by being the most respectful...the most polite, the most fawning and obsequious members in history...once again playing our favorite card.."we will be SO non-controversial, SO compliant and SO unoffending...that you'll just HAVE to love us"...our Christian puppy-dog training at work again.
Take an Aprim...and you can have him...who styles himself an "author and historian". The first person to ask him, "based on what"? will be exiled. In time this will leave only a small group of supporters who accept him at his own estimation of himself...something all Assrins demand you must do, if you too want to play "Assyrian". Since he has no more credentials for these lofty titles than a brick...and since no one else has...another guy with a different slant on "history", but every bit as much an "author", will attract his own following...and why not when there isn't any criteria for any of this history and authorship except, that's-the-way-this-author-writes-about-history. Now you have two opposing sides, neither of which has an intellectual pot to piss in...but each of which has just as valid a claim (and each of which needs to piss somewhere), if you can call it that, to "gratness"...so the two sides feel legitimized and even annointed, by their own pee...and you have "two camps" formed. Only we have 1,450 camps all built along the same lines...that is, one guy calling himself what he chooses with a followng made of his pals, family, several tribal members from the old country as well as high school buddies in his new country...who agree with him and who call everyone else traitors and sell-outs.
And all of them will have their venom ready for that rare, unmittigated ass, who bothered to read a few books on the subject and, most loathesome of all, actually wrote one where it could be reviewed by someone NOT related to the author.
There is such a wide world of topics concerning our provocative claim to being descendants of the ancient Assyrians, Chaldeans and Akkadians etc. that requires, that fairly screams for, a more open and accepting approach...not this narrow lock-step drumming of iron-clad heels they fill the air with about what NAME to call this conglomeration of magpies and vultures as if once that's settled everything else falls into place automatically. The ongoing, never-ending name controversy is just a sympton of what ails us, it's hardly significant in itself...as if just by calling it an "automobile" you should expect to be able to drive your sofa to work. So many fascinating points to consider and reconsider...but no...we have Aprim, BetBooHoo... the Iraqi, formerly-to-be-known-as-Jones-but-stayed-Jatou-in-the -end...and the rest of them whose accumulated contribution to any sort of debate you couldn't find if you read 1000 "Diclarations"...hashing and rehashing the same tired old National Questiondoodles till you'd swear, like super-patriots everywhere, their job is to undo rather than do better.
-- Re-built Farid
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