Doesn’t that ex-AN FO know that the gentlemen he’s addressing will simply have to take the job on offer ‘for the sake of their families’? (That phrase will have a very familiar ring to it to quite a few older readers from both sides of the ‘Great Divide’ (not the mountain range) who troll this site.)
And
TIMMEEEE. you say in your last post that
…Time will tell and if they do accept they will be the true pariahs of the pacific.
Some would say that your use of the future tense in that comment might be somewhat unusual.
This unfortunate Nauru business is a bit like individual pain thresholds or different individuals’ concepts as to what is considered acceptable, say, on early evening television. One man’s light, perhaps slightly naughty entertainment is gross pornography to another.
While there are many who cannot see that the actions of ‘The Few’ in 1989 in taking back their (or coming in and taking) jobs in AN and TN was in any way wrong, it would appear that there are far fewer who would not feel that it would be morally wrong for anyone to take a job in Nauru now through the offer
Gilligan is making to the Air Nauru management.
Unless, of course, you see no other way of looking after the interests of your family (there’s that phrase again). Then, the sharp, easily-defined lines denoting what is and isn’t morally acceptable can become somewhat blurred, especially if you’ve gone through the painful process once before in your life and managed to rationalise your actions into an acceptable form – to yourself, at least. There’s an old saying that no one misses another slice of bread off the loaf that’s already been cut. Rationalising (what for some is unrationisable) is a bit like that. Many think that decisions like the one made by ‘The Few’ in 1989 and the one some of those same people might be about to make now are exactly the same. There’s no degree to it – it’s exactly like being “only a little bit pregnant”.