new shores

I have just read another very fine post by Dan W, using riptides as a metaphor for our current economic and political plight:

Struggle to overcome the riptide by fighting against it and swimming directly into it and you die. Swim perpendicular to the tide, thus eventually freeing yourself from the rip current, and then with relative ease return to shore.
...
Remember, surviving a rip current means accepting the fact that a paradigm shift is inevitable. One cannot survive the perils of a rip current by swimming back to the same spot on the shore from which one was rent. One must swim parallel to the shore, only returning to solid ground once the rip current has relented. And so, playing out the metaphor even further, when the swimmer---the survivor---returns to the beach, it is not the same beach from which he first departed. It is a different place on the shore. Survival is predicated upon accepting the fact that a return to the same shore is simply impossible; that a new shore must be explored, and that this new shore must be accepted not for how it can be manipulated and exploited, but for what is has to offer.
...
How do we compel our leaders to recognize the changing currents, and to join us in finding peace and relative prosperity on new and pristine shores rather then fight the suicidal battle against the forces of nature?

Dan then tentatively calls for "political action on a mass scale". I do not believe that that will happen soon enough, or that it would save the day. The sheep will follow the shepherd, and not the lone goat. And the shepherd is swimming against the tide... The sheep will not think for themselves, but will continue to place faith in those who they are accustomed to following. In this context Obama is a much greater danger than Bush ever was, as he is infinitely more believable. And make no mistake, Obama's understanding of economics and mathematics is just as feeble as his predecessor (o.k. well maybe not quite....).

Some of us will swim sideways. Most will simply follow their leaders and in doing so, will drown. Yes, those of us who swim sideways will land on new shores, and we should look forward to that with optimism - the new shores may seem unfamiliar to us now, but they will be a more humane habitat than the old.