Okay,
it’s time for me to finally get political for an entire post. If there are any Turkish
nationalists in the room, or American conservatives for that matter (spoiler: I
don’t like the Orange Man), please step outside, because I am about to express
opinions that contradict your own and will as a result make you angry. Luckily,
I really hate talking about American politics, so when the urge to get
political and alienate potential followers of my blog arises, I’ll usually be
addressing less-volatile subjects, like Armenia vs its angry neighbors (yes,
even that’s a less volatile subject than American politics). Although when the
topic of religion rears its head it will probably get rid of anyone who
disagrees with me anyway. But today’s topic deals with American politics. Oh
joy.
So
recently, something happened that genuinely shocked me. Something I never
thought I’d live to see. The senate of our corrupt dystopian country where
nothing good ever happens, recognized the killing of 1.5 million Armenians by
Ottoman Turkey as genocide. The US has been in bed with Turkey since the Cold
War, has a nuclear base in the country, and has a common heritage with Turkey of
being founded by invaders and built over the blood and bones of natives. They
seemed the perfect pair. Until Turkey made America mad by invading Syria after
America left, and finally doing what they’d longed to do for about a century:
kill off the Kurds. Also, they’re probably mad about the oil. Because that’s
what it always comes down to. As punishment, in late October 2019 the House of
Representatives dusted off the old Armenian genocide resolution, which is
something they’ve been threatening Turkey with for years. Normally Turkey
pleads for forgiveness, or makes empty threats, and it gets shelved by whoever’s
president and forgotten. But something strange happened this time. It passed!
Now
people rightly criticized Rep. Ilhan Omar, known for taking a stand on human
rights issues, for giving a hypocritical “present” vote instead of being for
it.
This
annoyed me too. See genocide deniers have this fallacy they like to trot out,
and it goes something like this. They think every country should recognize its
own genocides before they recognize another country’s genocide; and that a
country shouldn’t be obligated to recognize their genocides until every other
country on Earth recognizes their own first. That way no one ever recognizes a
genocide. I wonder if anyone has ever named this fallacy. It's basically "what-aboutism", and probably a variant of the Red Herring Fallacy. Ilhan
Omar apparently believes at least the first half of this fallacy, and this was her given reason for voting “present”. But it still
passed in a landslide, Omar did nothing to stop it. Sure, it was annoying and
made me lose all respect for Omar, but people really blew it out of proportion,
honestly. No one went after the Republicans who voted “no”, suspiciously. I
don’t trust American politicians anyway, even the ones who claim to be on the
left. They’re all puppets of the rich. Actors. But tellingly, a lot of the same
people criticizing Omar had nothing to say about Trump’s efforts to kill the
resolution, nor his inviting Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan over to the US to
give a speech, during which he denied the Armenian genocide yet again, and
claimed that Armenians were simply nomads and not native to their own lands;
proving he could have had another career as a historical fantasy writer. Trump
just stood there and nodded during this casually racist speech.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/video/world/erdogan-condemns-house-resolution-recognizing-armenian-genocide/2019/11/13/b997c829-26c5-4137-b8b9-8b20eeb60430_video.html
This of course didn’t surprise me, and it was a waste of time being angry about it. But all the while, Armenian Trump supporters stuck their heads in the sand while muttering “What about Obama?” to whoever confronted them about it. If you’re an Armenian conservative and you still support Trump at this point, when he’s clearly shown us who’s side he’s on, I don’t know what to say to you. Except that you’re a hypocrite, and a traitor to your ancestors. There, I said it. What now, you mad? You gonna cry? Go stick your heads back in the sand and cry about it, traitors. Hazar amot! Ամո'թ քեզի, հազար ամոթ:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posttv/video/world/erdogan-condemns-house-resolution-recognizing-armenian-genocide/2019/11/13/b997c829-26c5-4137-b8b9-8b20eeb60430_video.html
This of course didn’t surprise me, and it was a waste of time being angry about it. But all the while, Armenian Trump supporters stuck their heads in the sand while muttering “What about Obama?” to whoever confronted them about it. If you’re an Armenian conservative and you still support Trump at this point, when he’s clearly shown us who’s side he’s on, I don’t know what to say to you. Except that you’re a hypocrite, and a traitor to your ancestors. There, I said it. What now, you mad? You gonna cry? Go stick your heads back in the sand and cry about it, traitors. Hazar amot! Ամո'թ քեզի, հազար ամոթ:
They’re still doing mental
gymnastics to justify their Orange messiah.
And
that’s as edgy as the blog will get, ladies and gentlemen. If this blog pisses
anyone off, I’ll take solace in the fact that someone finally cares what I
think, even if they hate it. That said, I don’t think I’ll be sharing this one
in any Armenian groups on Facebook. As opinionated as I am, and as much as I want
to share my genius with others, I hate internet arguments. You’ll never change
anyone’s mind over the internet. I have so many better things to do with my
time.
Now
of course, I thought the recognition by the House of Representatives was a fluke.
Surely Turkey and America would make up, and at Trump’s urging, the Armenian
genocide resolution would be shelved again until the next time Turkey pissed
off America. Something just like this happened under Obama, more than once, and
I think Bush too if I recall. And it happens every few months in Israel. Really,
it does, look it up. Except…that’s not what happened, this time. On December 12th,
the US Senate recognized the Armenian genocide. And I still can’t believe it.
(By the way, Artsakhpress is a
great little news website that needs more traffic).
And predictably, Erdogan is butthurt and throwing a hilarious hissy fit. In their usual “what-aboutism”, red herring fallacy retort, Erdogan is now threatening to recognize the genocide of the Native Americans as a genocide.
(And here’s one of my comics from
my days doing Artsakhball on Facebook. Which will be another blog post, I
assure you.)
Talk
about doing the right thing for the absolute worst reasons. Thing of it is,
although people often make excuses for and justify the genocide of Native
Americans (which is a horrible thing to do, by the way), I’ve never once heard
someone claim it never happened. Nor does anyone pretend Europeans were here
before the Native Americans, or claim that any ruins or artifacts left by the
Native Americans were actually made by ancient Europeans. Aliens, maybe, but
not ancient Europeans. Generally speaking. No one is saying the Native
Americans were never here, as far as I can tell. This is how Turkey handles denial of the Armenian genocide. Turks were always on the lands they occupy now, Armenians never lived there, and so on. The United States should
officially recognize more genocides against individual tribes and give more in
reparations, sure. I agree with that. But you can’t equate America’s response
to the Native American genocide with Turkey’s response to the Armenian
genocide, which is what Erdogan is trying to do in order to distract people.
They’re two very different things.
Where
do we go from here? Well the hope is that this will get other countries who’ve
been dragging their feet with Armenian genocide recognition, such as the United
Kingdom, Australia, and Israel, to finally recognize it. And eventually, Turkey
will have to admit that it happened and face their dark, bloody past. And then
they can pay Armenia reparations, give us back at least some of our historic
land, stop lying about history, stop oppressing other minorities as well, and
we can all open the borders and be friends. I remain pessimistic that this will
be a short process, if it even happens before civilization finally crumbles, but
I’ve been wrong before. Of course, maybe Turkey will succeed in getting America
to backpedal on the resolution, although that actually doesn’t seem too likely.
It’s never good to be too pessimistic, nor too optimistic. The aim is to be
realistic.
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