I’ve emailed a link to my Open Letter to Americans to the US Secretary of State, the US President, and the Prime Minister of Canada, and, by address, the people or Governments they govern My cover notes to these three officials follow:
Dear Secretary Blinken and US Department of State:
Please see my open letter to Americans at https://gerryarmstrong.ca/the-best-gaza-solution-money-can-buy/
I hope you are able to take my sincere proposal to heart. Obviously State is essential to have the right thing done in matters like Gazan lives.
Truly,
[GA, contact info]
Dear President Biden and Administration:
Please see my open letter to Americans at https://gerryarmstrong.ca/the-best-gaza-solution-money-can-buy/
I am sure that there are people in your administration who can understand the need for a path much different from the one you have been taking us down. Gaza is a great place to start.
Remember that you are the unelected leader of the Free World, and I am in the Free World. Don’t leave the Gazans in a death prison largely of the Free World dictatorship’s making.
For the Love of God,
[GA, contact info]
Dear Prime Minister Trudeau and the Government of Canada:
Please see my open letter to Americans, “The Best Gaza Solution Money Can Buy” at https://gerryarmstrong.ca/the-best-gaza-solution-money-can-buy/
I include Canada in my suggestion to the Americans because I’m Canadian, and we, and you, have a duty to be wise and gentle. Unwisdom and ungentleness abound here in good old Canada, a land so fertile and rich, and they should be replaced.
My dad, Battlin’ Bob Armstrong, told me, as far back as I can recall, and unfailingly when boxing was on the radio, that he always pulled for the underdog. I think he voted for people he considered underdogs in elections too. In the World Series every year, after I had grasped that there was such a thing and before I left home, the Yankees were never the underdogs. They were always the overdogs, although my dad didn’t use the term that I recall. I’m pretty sure he thought it was money that separated the overdogs from the underdogs. Although, with Marciano, I think he pulled for him because, for a heavyweight, he was not tall.
Same with the other American League teams who once in a while made it to the Championship. The National League Teams in the Series were always, so my dad said, the underdogs. In school, in literature, in national history, in sacred texts, underdogs and underdogism are extolled. Think of David, Goliath and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In a lot of competitions these days, an effort is made to have opponents be somewhat equal, or at least competitive, and underdogs and overdogs are often determined by third-party betting.
I just learned that “underdogism” is indeed a legitimate word, and it means “tenacious support for the underdog, or disadvantaged party.” “Overdogism” hasn’t made it into the English lexicon, I think, but I also think the concept is a real societal stupidity that is about to be understood to the world’s shame: “tenacious support for the overdog, or advantaged party.” “Underdog” is a canine superhero.
In the pertinent paradigm, Gazans are the underdogs and the Israelis are the overdogs, with crushing advantages. The Gazans, who have zero expectation of “winning,” have been the severely disadvantaged underdogs in their conflict with the Israelis for fifty plus years. Out of underdogs arise martyrs, of course, so, the old saying goes, make every dog equal. God is no respecter of overdogs or overpersons. If the indoctrination of citizens into trust or faith in the rightness, or even the holiness, of underdogism is encouraged, only with exceptional hypocrisy can the raging unstoppable overdog be supported against this ragtag hopeless half-mad underdog. It takes super hypocrisy to vilify and terrify the poor underdog supporters who are still indoctrinated into practicing underdogism.
But it’s all Our overdogs, and Our underdogs, isn’t it? We must make all underdogs Ours.
May God help us.
Gerry Armstrong [contact info]