@PaulWay @johnquiggin Still needs to be called out. #Albanese, I mean. It’s a pathetic response
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@johnquiggin while I was at Navy during Afghanistan and Iraq, all our best weapons engineers and commanders and sailors and cooks and comms officers and navigators were rotating constantly between Baghdad and Uruzgan. There was nothing but frontline for any of them. I would have gone to Baghdad myself, they were short of people who could do what I did with servers, but my husband asked me to please not volunteer for that because I had babies to feed still.
@emmadavidson
Thank you for your service Emma.
@RaymondPierreL3 I was civilian, they didn’t have service personnel doing IT systems back then
@emmadavidson
Service nonetheless Emma. Service to country in any capacity ought to be recognised because when someone volunteers (or is, as in the past, conscripted) it is about much more than a mere job.
@johnquiggin I mean, yes, but...
Since when did calling Tump out on any of his absolutely amazing quantity of bullshit change anything?
And he's petty, vindictive, and doesn't care about the law. So anything we say against him gets remembered and used against us.
About the best I think we could have done is to simply say we don't care what Tump thinks, we stand by our troops.
@PaulWay @johnquiggin Still needs to be called out. #Albanese, I mean. It’s a pathetic response
@treleanor @johnquiggin Re 'calling things out'...
One of the talks at #eo2026 by @emmadavidson posed the truism that "the standard you walk past is the standard you accept". I asked Emma how we could apply this in a world where the Outrage Machine is constantly feeding us information about things we need to 'call out'.
She responded - hope I paraphrase correctly here - that there are things that can be 'called out' and things that can be 'called in' - i.e. that may be able to be solved by polite personal responses rather than public calls.
Personally I still struggle with this question.
Because what good does a random post on Social Media about "calling out Albanese's <fill in disagreeable behaviour here>" do? Other than make you feel good that you've contributed to the Outrage Machine?
By all means write to the Prime Minister's office. Write to any politician, business leader, public figure, and 'call them out' on their behaviour. Their staff will add that to all the noise they get about everything they do and overall it changes nothing. I've had little to no success writing to any of them to either get a conversation going about what policies I actually object to, like approving new coal and gas harvesting, as opposed to mere opinions about whether a politician could say the things I want them to say.
Can we please stop feeding the Outrage Machine? Can we stop being addicted to being outraged?
Getting angry at whether Albanese's response to Tump was particularly this or that seems futile to me.
@PaulWay @treleanor @johnquiggin in the context of the person behaving poorly being someone you have a personal connection to, calling it in can be an effective way to change their behaviour because it’s less shaming. It’s hard for people to imagine themselves doing better when they’re feeling shame. But if it’s not someone you can have a conversation with, and you don’t know anyone else who could do it, there isn’t an option other than call it out or let it go. Sometimes people reach a point where they just can’t let it go, and they need to name the problem behaviour.
@emmadavidson @PaulWay @treleanor @johnquiggin I also think it’s possible to call out people, parties, behaviours, policies, etc., in ways that don’t add to the “outrage machine” – some of that is about language, tone, context, and location / medium (note: I am not suggesting that we should tone-police people from marginalised & oppressed groups)
also – sometimes outrage is an appropriate response to what goes on around us (see also: rage, frustration, anger, fear, sadness, etc.). and sometimes enough outrage from enough people can create or build momentum for genuine change
but it’s also important to focus our outrage (and other motivating emotions) on the correct target – in the instance mentioned, the vast majority of outrage I feel is squarely directed at Trump, his deeply-racist frothing MAGA base, sitting members of the US Republican party, and the efficient, organised puppeteers behind the execution of the Project 2025 playbook (the Heritage Foundation)