Fly The Plane!

My reaction to the news was a string of expletives that would have shocked a sailor and would have killed my saintly mother, and even then it felt inadequate.

So we need even MORE calm this evening.

There’s a lesson that I heard early and often when taking flying lessons. “Fly the plane!” Things happen, things that are unexpected, things that catch you off guard, things that surprise and distract you. You have be prepared at a cellular level to remember tha no matter what happens (a door flew open, the engine quit, there’s a fire or smoke, a bird strike) the first rule has to be to “Fly the plane!” The reasoning, in short, is that while bad things might be happening that will be disasterous in five minutes or ten minutes, if you lose control of the plane you now have two overlapping emergencies and losing control of the plane can kill you in seconds, so you’ll never have a chance to solve the unexpected problem.

This happened to me a couple of times. One time the door latch cut loose and the pilot side door popped open when I was just taking off, just a couple hundred feet off the ground and slow and climbing. Suddenly, tons of noise and wind and stuff blowing around the cabin. The plane will fly just fine with the door unlatched, THAT won’t crash you. Stalling the plane by climbing too steeply, or turning to bank, losing control when you’re low and have not room or time to recover, THAT will leave you the first one at the crash site in a ball of fire and a small crater. So “Fly the plane!”

Similarly, in 107 days we absolutely must prevent a psychotic rapist, felon, and traitor from getting anywhere near the Oval Office, and it would be really helpful to take honkin’ big majorities back in the House and Senate so that we can get legislation throught to fix some of the problems that have come up in the last dozen years. SCOTUS reform and accountability. Women’s reproductive rights. Trans rights. Voting rights. Repealing Citizens United.

Those are the things that we need to accomplish and winning the election in November is how we get them done. We got a surprise today, we’re caught off guard, we’re distracted. “Fly the plane!”

We have a lot of work to do. The initial signs seem good as of this evening, order is being restored. It might almost get exciting, as opposed to terrifying.

But we have to stay calm and “Fly the plane!”

Here’s some calm. (Ascutney again – DUH!)

The path ahead might not be flat or easy, but it can be beautiful and we can have a fantastic time travelling on it, working to reach our goals. It will be worth it. You know what to do.