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I woke up yesterday morning thinking about the parallels between Captain Sully of Flight 1459 and Barack Obama and this country at this point in time.
I posted this in another thread, but someone said it deserves its own, so here it is.
The only real difference between the predicament the new President Obama will find himself in two days from now, and the one Captain Sully found himself in, is that Sully and his crew and passengers didn't know before they even took off that they were going to be in big trouble. Obama and his crew, and this country, do. That's about the only difference.
We already know we're in serious trouble, just as Sully's plane was soon after leaving the ground. And our pilot also has to be able to think quickly, wisely and well in order to decide what to do to avert complete disaster. And his crew has to stand behind him as he does.
He needs to have the cool and the wisdom to steer us in a direction and to a place that may look completely irrational and crazy to us, that may terrify us, that may make us think he doesn't know what the hell he's doing.
Some of us may be scared. Some of us may be angry. Some of us may panic.
It will help if some of us try to remind the rest of us that the guy wasn't chosen because he was incompetent. That we should trust and believe that he has a handle on this.
He won't be able to do it alone. He will need a crew he can trust. And when he executes his plan, at first it may well look as if he's made things worse rather than better. It may look as if everything is going to sink, and we'll all go down with it.
But that won't happen with a competent crew and people to help make the rescue work, just like all those boats that came to help the downed and half-submerged flight.
Everyone wasn't rescued right away. One of them even had some bad injuries--survivable, but bad. Some of them had to stand out there on the wings for a while and wait. And everyone had to cooperate to evacuate the plane in an orderly way and then wait for everything else to work out.
And the pilot also went back and checked and made sure that no one--not a single person--was left behind.
That's the patience that will be required of us. It doesn't mean we can't speak up when we have an issue or a problem. But it does mean we have to give the plan a chance to work, and that it won't work unless a lot of people cooperate. He can't do it alone.
It takes a good and competent pilot, and a good and competent crew. Passengers who don't panic but who help each other. And other forces that also support the effort.
Working together, they can take a catastrophe and turn it into a triumph in which everyone is saved.
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